Tortilla bowls…

Okay, I saw this somewhere out in the Pinterest world and I have to say that it actually works.  Take a jumbo muffin pan, turn it upside down and spray lightly with olive oil Pam between four of the cups (although you may not actually need to do this).  Now take a small tortilla and place it on the pan like this…

I baked at 350 degrees for about 8-10 minutes until it was crispy then filled with refried beans, turkey taco meat and some shredded cheese.  YUM!

Wow to figure out what to bake a large tortilla on without buying one of those expensive, single purpose tortilla bakers.  Hmmm…maybe a stainless or glass bowl?  Although you wouldn’t get the same look.  Any ideas out there?

Pinterest crafting…

I decided to try some of the crafts I’ve had on my Crafts to Make Someday Pinterest board.  I’ve been pinning like crazy, but haven’t taken much time to actually craft and that’s the fun part!

First off, this cute bracelet is a copy of this one.  All you need is wooden beads, leather lace and a pretty button.  I like how I can wear it with the button in the front to show it off or in the back.  

Next up was to make a copy of this bird nest necklace.  I think it turned out pretty cute for my first attempt. What do you think?  I used the 24 gauge wire, but you can also use 20 gauge for a more delicate look. 

I saw this road trip pillow case and thought it would be perfect for our Disney trip coming up over Fall break.  It has a big pocket on the front to stow night time reading and a little friend.  Lauren is loving the color blue right now and she loves puppy dogs, so when she saw this fabric at Joann’s she grabbed the bolt right off the rack.  I picked up a yard of fabric, a package of jumbo rickrack, a craft felt square, two fat quarters of fabric for the pocket, and a piece of webbing for the handle.  I think it turned out darn cute and she loves it.  

I made a run to Michael’s yesterday and they had a bunch of the $1 toy aisle stuff on clearance, so I picked up a spiral notebook for .25 cents and a piece of Disney scrapbook paper.  I remembered this idea I saw the other day.  I cut out a Mickey head, a bow and used my Cricut for the letters.  Now Lauren has her own personalized autograph book for Disney.  She LOVES it and can’t wait to get all her favorites to sign! 

Lauren also got in on the jewelry making and made a little stretch bracelet.  Thanks, Nancy, for the little beading kit!

Well, it was a fun and productive craft weekend.  Now to think about what to try next. 

First day of kindergarten…

I took today off so Joe and I both could see her off to school today.  We got up extra early since we weren’t quite sure how the morning traffic would be at this time.  I’m usually on the freeway by 6:15am to make it to work by 7am.  At that time traffic is light, but school doesn’t start until 7:45am so I was expecting it to be pretty bad.  We have her enrolled out of district, so the school is about 12 miles away. 

I got her up for breakfast at about 6:15am and she was pretty excited to get her big day started.  We read The Night Before Kindergarten before bed last night and talked all about how the morning and day would go. 

Here’s my big kindergartener girl!

The classes meet in the playground and the teacher leads the line of kids into the building.  It was organized chaos with cameras snapping everywhere!

She was all smiles until the other lines started going in…then she was a bit apprehensive. 

But when her line started to move, she went right in with no tearful good-bye.  With a final snap of the camera she was gone.  Off she went to the very first day of school.  As soon as she was out of sight, my heart sank for a second and the tears started.  My baby was off on her own to a whole new adventure and I wasn’t going along…sniff, sniff.  It’s so hard to let go.  I can’t wait to pick her up and hear all about her first big day. 

Craft day…

Yesterday I had some friends over for crafting.  Lauren was so excited for the day and I love this big smiley hug I caught.  This is her BFF, Lily, who stayed the night on Friday. 

 

Before everyone arrived, I sneaked a squeeze in with the girls…

For lunch we had fresh fruit, lemon rosemary chicken and roasted veggie pasta salad. Both recipes were from Jamie Deen’s new show Home for Dinner and both were big hits!

I was thrilled to actually finish the craft I had in mind for the day.  I had this idea pinned on my Pinterest board for a while.  It’s super simple and I think the whole project costs about $7.  I painted a 16” x 20” canvas and used five coordinated sheets of 12” x 12” scrapbook paper cut into leaves.  I stuck them down with Zots clear adhesive dots.  In the tutorial, she uses a hot glue gun but I figured that would be messy and cause clumping under the leaves.  The dots are flat and so easy to use. 

On the edge, just wrap the leaves around the side of the canvas and stick it down with the adhesive dots.  Before I glued any leaves down, I positioned them in place and sort of moved them around and trimmed as needed until I liked the pattern.   Big thanks to my friend, Heather, who has a fantastic eye for color and patterns. 

Here’s our little “artists” caught red handed chalking up the play center.  By the time we busted them they had chalk everywhere including the inside walks of the clubhouse.  Thanks goodness it was only chalk and the hose took it right off!

July 4th and catch-up

We had some pretty crazy weather here this July 4th.  They said on the news it was the coolest 4th in 100 years!  It should have been around 110 degrees, but instead it was overcast, rainy and in the low 90’s.  Lauren was thrilled to get her barely used Minnie Mouse umbrella out…

and climb around on her playset.  Since it wasn’t that hot, we decided to head out to the fireworks display at the local park.  Lauren had a great time and she actually complained she was chilly during the display.  Now that’s unheard of in July around here!

There’s a couple of new things going on in the kitchen.  I made a TV chart so Lauren can keep track of how many shows she’s watching.  She gets six half hour shows from the Disney channel or Nick Jr. per day.  She’s been really good about marking the chart after each show.  The hardest part for her has been managing her morning shows so she has a show to watch in the evening.  Since Dad is home with her during the day and she’s not in school right now, she tends to crawl into bed with Dad in the morning and watches Disney channel before they get up for the day.  She can kill three shows right there.  If anyone else has ideas for how they manage TV watching, I’d love to hear about it. 

The other side of the fridge holds a few cups mounted with magnets so Lauren can grab one and get her own water whenever she wants.  I got kinda tired of hearing “Mom, I need some water”.  Now she gets her own.  I borrowed this idea from Made and it’s been working great.   

I haven’t had time to sit down and work on our yearly photo albums, but with Shutterfly’s new on-line scrapbooking software I put this book together quickly to send out to Grandpa and Grandma to show them what we’ve been up to so far this year…

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly offers exclusive photobook layouts so you can make your book just the way you want.

Kiddie Pool Swim Party

Lauren has been asking to have a pool party…too bad we don’t have a pool!  No problem, she had a kiddie pool party instead complete with water guns, beach ball, watermelon and ice pops.  For dinner we made our own pizza…yum.  I love Trader Joe’s pizza dough. 

It was a super hot day yesterday, but the girls had tons of fun and that’s all that matters to me.  Us moms cooled off with them in the kiddie pool, got splashed and sprayed with water guns and I loved every minute of it. 

     

    

    

Crafty Weekend

So, one of my friends wanted a big chalkboard that’s also magnetic for her kitchen.  We headed to a local antique mall and she found a big old frame already painted in a super light robin’s egg blue and ruffed up a bit…perfect!

It had a mirror in it, but that’s okay.  We took off the old frame backing and removed the mirror.  There were a million little staples very tightly holding the mirror in, so it took quite a bit of elbow grease. 

After that we picked up a piece of sheet metal at Home Depot and cut it with tin snips to fit the frame insert.  Something to note…aluminum sheeting is NOT sheet metal and it’s NOT magnetic…just sayin.  Not that we bought aluminum sheeting and cut it just to find out that our magnets didn’t stick.  Nope, not us, we didn’t do that!

Of course the sheet metal didn’t fit exactly as expected, so it took some trimming to get it just right.  Does this always happen to everyone or just me? 

The next step was to paint the sheet metal with about a gazillion coats of chalkboard paint.  Actually it was about 5 or 6 coats, but it felt like a gazillion!  Even with all those coats it’s not a perfectly even black surface, but it’s pretty close. 

Now, instead of of putting the big, heavy original frame backing back on, we decided to pick up some foam core and good old Duck Tape.  We put the chalkboard into the frame, backed it with foam core we cut to size and taped it all around with the Duck Tape. 
 
Here’s the finished board.  It works great and it’s magnetic.  Not that pathetic, almost not existent magnetic strength you get with magnetic paint, but a super strong magnetic hold. 

While we had the chalkboard paint out, we made these basket labels using a package of little wooden signs we got at Michaels. 

I also made this magnetic chalkboard for my office door at work.  The frame is from Cut it Out and the wooden flower cut-out came from Pick Your Plum.  I just painted the frame and mod podged some scrapbook paper onto the flower.  I sanded both and used some antiquing gel.  I love how it turned out. 

Here’s another project using a Cut it Out frame, but this one is scrapbook paper over a sheet metal insert to make it magnetic for hanging notes or photos. 



Now, what’s the next project going to be?? 

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